


Another Night, Another Dream

by Foxberry



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Awkward Conversations, Canon Compliant, Confessions, Cute Ending, Dreams and Nightmares, Fluff, Getting Together, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pre-Relationship, Prophetic Dreams, Prophetic Visions, Realization, Soulmate AU, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, soulmate dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 02:35:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8648437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foxberry/pseuds/Foxberry
Summary: Soulmate dreams were likely fantasies society had fabricated as a new fairytale. Dreams were meant to give glimpses of a connection, of moments, but no story had ever been the same, no story ever went the same. Where one found solace in those glimpses, the other was left dreading each moment spent asleep.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [riverbanks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverbanks/gifts).



> So glad I could be part of the Voltron Exchange when I missed out on the sign-ups. I'm glad I could be a pinch hitter! I decided to combine a handful of the prompts all into one idea with a twist. I hope you like it!

The first time Shiro noticed his dreams was the week before he was due to leave on the Kerberos mission. It hadn’t been anything special up to that point. They’d simply been glimpses of dust and dirt, expanses of nothing with bleak horizons, and walls closing in the more that he seemed to stare at them in his dreams. They were nothing out of the ordinary, until he could almost taste them.

The dirt clung to his hair, strangely unkempt and blowing in the breeze. The sun was blistering in moments and blinded his eyes while the sweeping winds grazed his face. There was shelter, although small, that enclosed him every time he blinked, bringing him back to the same place in the middle of the desert. Its sand was gritty in his mouth, like salt on the tongue, strange and foreign.

It was the chilling loneliness that hit him. The idea of being somewhere new, unfamiliar, and alone. That was what got under his skin, squirming and itching at the nerves already tense with the preparations for a long voyage. He shrugged them off, convinced they were his fears manifested, but he couldn’t shake how real everything had felt.

Yet when he left for Kerberos, they continued, returning to his mind with blurred shapes and voices he couldn’t place. Beige and brown blended together behind threads of red and spots of blue. No matter how long he tried to linger in the dream, he could make no more out of it. They grew faint the further from Earth they went and over time he thought nothing of them at all.

He suspected in an earnest hope it was his own soulmate dream, a soft telling of the future and the person one was meant to be with. They’d never made sense to Shiro. Soulmate dreams were likely fantasies society had fabricated as a new fairytale. Dreams were meant to give glimpses of a connection, of moments, but no story had ever been the same, no story ever went the same. Dust and dirt and rock were likely just worries of the Kerberos mission failing and he was all the more convinced when the Galra came.

The dream haunted him in captivity, reminding him of somewhere far away, teasing every sleeping moment when his eyes would close to break free of his predicament. What seemed a harsh and dry barren place became a source of escape. He drifted into the dream when the exhaustion took him, like it could send him home if he hoped for Earth long enough.

He clung to that dream like a photograph in his hand, desperately clasping to it in his hours of need, searching it, and appealing to whatever brought it to him to let him keep it. Every moment in it he could smell the scent of old wood, feel the sting of stark sunlight, and kiss the wind as it raced across his lips until a thin slip of fabric would brush across them.

And yet, when he returned to Earth, after everything, he had wondered if the dream had told of the mission failure or his return home. Neither seemed to fit with what he had seen and still continued to see, details growing more distinct and more vivid when he was finally out of harm’s way.

  
* * *

  
Keith couldn’t remember when his recurring dream started until it woke him in the dead of night. His muffled cry stuck in his throat, too loud and raw for even his mouth to make into sound. At the time, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a nightmare so vivid. There were glimpses of dark metal, purple lights, and the screams of hundreds jeering at him. He couldn’t escape the screaming when he woke again to the silence of his Garrison room. He couldn’t forget the fear.

Classes seemed strangely barren in comparison. His attention waned between task and memory of the dream. He expected the raw commanding voices of strange blurred figures to come from his superiors and found himself tensing in anticipation. Every moment seemed to pass slowly between nights when he would find himself faced with them again.

Once his eyes shut at night, the dark would never leave. Tension ached through his body, coursing through veins and tingling nerves. He jolted and cursed and drew breath through his teeth. Searing pain wracked his body until he found himself twisted in his sheets, praying for the dreams to end.

Surrounded by enemies in his dreams and by his peers in his waking life, Keith felt fenced in and yet alone, unable to trust where the line between reality and dream lay. He withdrew from those around him, waiting for more of that jeering and the darkness to fall around him. It was probably a sign, telling him he had to be ready to fight because it would only be a matter of time before someone would try to hurt him.

When the expulsion came, he felt a surge of relief, hoping the dreams would end and would never turn out to be real. Isolating himself in the desert seemed the best option. A shack served as a shelter from the winds and the rain and a place to sleep when the dreams came in blurry flashes.

For every day he spent searching the mountains for some kind of meaning to his life, he dreamed of a sword in his hand, his hand being a sword. One long piece of metal to fight his way through the exhaustion and the onslaught against him when the lights grew dim and the growling started. Yet waking meant freedom from the dream, and in his bid for escape, he pushed himself further and farther until he found stranger things hiding in the depths of the earth.

He threw himself into working everything out, drawing and collecting as much as he could on the evidence he had found. Hung up on his wall, it seemed like progress, a distraction from the threat that came to him when he slept, and he knew it would all come to mean something. The more he focussed, the more the dreams began to change.

Darkness gave way to more darkness. His eyes would open in his dreams to blurred grey and shadows. His arms that had once been aching and swinging with a blade were restrained. He couldn’t move, but nor did he wish to move. While his body didn’t ache, his mind was tired, apprehensive, waiting for something all the more terrifying to show itself to him in his vulnerable state.

He thought that the dreams would be over when he found himself surrounded by people he once knew, that somehow their presence would let the fear in his dreams fade. Yet the dreams continued with more blood and sweat and tears, drowning out the hope they’d go away. They remained in his mind, but now he could feel the longing, the yearning, more than he ever had before.

  
* * *

  
Shiro expected the dreams would stop once they formed Voltron, but reality proved different. Instead he found the dreams splicing into his day, flashing behind his eyes whenever his mind wandered, putting the sounds of the wind in his mind when silence fell. Perhaps he’d dismissed it earlier than he should have.

Back in the Garrison he’d heard people tell of soulmate dreams, the kind that plagued people with moments and glimpses through the eyes of another. They persisted when all other dreams would fade, taking so much of one’s mind that it would be hard to look around and not see what they had seen. The more that Shiro thought of it, the more this seemed to be the case with his own dreams.

Between fights and forming Voltron, he found himself seeing scribbled handwriting and pictures of Lions, walls of brown wood and white paper, and an expanse of desert with rocks rising up to the sky. It all felt so familiar, like he had known it for so long and yet it was all still new. He should know all of these images. He had seen them before. They looked like…

The realisation hit him in the middle of training when Keith grabbed him by the arm to ask if he was okay. Fingers squeezing his forearm drew him out of his daze and next he knew he was met with Keith’s apprehensive eyes, likely wondering why he had drifted off again. He couldn’t explain that he’d been dreaming of Keith’s shack, nor the dirt or the dust or the walls of his work. Those weren’t admissions to make in the middle of training, so he kept them to himself.

Over the next few weeks the dreams became more vivid. He could make out Keith’s handwriting, the picture of the Blue Lion, the touch of a red bandana across his lips. The more it came into his mind, the more flustered Shiro became. He could scarcely look Keith in the eye knowing that these dreams had plagued him for years. He couldn’t let rumours of such dreams interfere with their team. There was no proof that they were anything more than his mind playing tricks on him. He’d just have to let them pass.

The others seemed to notice his distance, but he couldn’t let that get to him. He threw himself into training, focussing on anything other than the sound of the wind in his mind. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t. Soulmate dreams were a thing of legend and they were meant to be clear and obvious and all of the things this dreams had not been, and yet they still proved him wrong.

When Keith approached him to ask what had been going on, Shiro simply shrugged and tried his best to say he was fine. There wasn’t really anything wrong, just dreams that he thought might have been of Keith, dreams that were suggesting that Keith and him might be…

Whatever was going on, he knew he had to ask at his next opportunity, see if Keith shared those dreams with him or if he was just imagining things. Maybe they were just memories of home, or simply memories of Keith’s shack. He had been there after all, but none of that explained the dreams before he got there. He would just have to ask the next change that he got.

  
* * *

  
Between the training and the missions, Keith found the dreams waking him up in the middle of the night, sweat clinging to his skin and his chest heaving as fast as his heart was beating. Nothing seemed to have changed at all. The longing and yearning grew stronger. The fierce determination to keep himself going burned in him until he woke to find it hadn’t left. The feeling remained him in the waking hours too, forcing him to find ways to use it, hide it, pretend he wasn’t so desperate for company when the dream had ended.

Keith had never had a recurring nightmare before. He’d heard whispers of these kinds of dreams, some of which were said to foretell something important or whatever, but he’d never been around people long enough to understand what they meant. Even his teammates talking about their own dreams seemed like he was peeking into a world he didn’t understand, or even belong.

Images of cold dark rooms flooded his mind in his sleep, mixed with the feel of metal on his skin and under his fingertips. His arm seared in pain, but he couldn’t remember which one when he would wake and throughout it all, it seemed far too much like… No, couldn’t be. Keith dismissed the thought several times, patting both arms down to be sure they were still there and found himself sighing in relief every time. The dreams were so much worse than any fight could ever be. He found himself thankful for that.

Training became a way for him to distract himself, surrounding himself with the others, finding their company soothing, almost necessary. Not a moment went by when he wouldn’t think of the crippling despair that crawled up his neck whenever he closed his eyes. It was familiar to his own in a twisted kind of way, and he assumed, despite how foreign the dreams were to him, that somehow it was just his fear of losing them.

When Shiro grew more and more absent, he felt the memories of the dream tug at him in a way they hadn’t before. Seeing Shiro backing away from them could only mean something was going on, and he had to know. He had asked during training, and he asked in a moment of quiet. Every answer was the same echo of “I’m fine”, but Keith knew better. Perhaps this strange dream thing the others has been talking about was something Shiro was experiencing too.

Keith gathered his courage during mealtime, when Shiro excused himself from the table. With a quiet word, Keith excused himself as well and jogged to catch up. His presence made an odd tension work through Shiro’s body and for a second, Keith regretted ever thinking it was a good idea to ask him at all. He pushed through, as he had been for months. There were worse things than asking questions.

“Have you… been having nightmares… too?” Keith asked carefully when they both came to a stop by a Castle window. The stars outside couldn’t have looked brighter than they did now. Keith could look nowhere else. Admitting the dreams were affecting him made him feel vulnerable, but it was okay to feel vulnerable with Shiro. “You seem off.”

Keith had to grit his teeth when he heard how the words came out, but there was no better way to say them. If something was off with Shiro, it would affect the whole team. It was already affecting him, and he had enough with his own dreams haunting him every night. Talking was the best option.

  
* * *

  
Shiro knew as soon as he left the room that Keith was following him. He’d suspected Keith would know immediately that something was wrong with him. It was hard to hide when he’d essentially been hiding for weeks. Yet he found himself relieved and curious and strangely nervous when Keith asked if he’d also been dreaming.

He stared at Keith for a long time, watching the way his eyes looked out at the stars. He seemed calm despite what dreams could mean, and Shiro had to wonder whether Keith had been dreaming of him as well. Soulmate dreams were never easy to pinpoint, never easy to examine, often lost in waking or mixed with memory. Shiro had to know if he was simply imagining things.

Shiro gulped and nodded, sighing before he spoke, “I’ve had… dreams.” Every word would have to be careful. Keith might not be having soulmate dreams at all. Perhaps he wasn’t either. “About a place in the desert, I think. The dirt and sand and all that.” He kept waiting for Keith to look up at him and seem surprised, but that look never came. Maybe Keith didn’t know what those dreams meant.

“It’s a dream I’ve had for a long time.” Shiro’s face started to burn as he talked. Putting himself on the line like this, exposing this dream, felt risky. It felt like a confession. “It’s likely a, uh, soulmate dream. You know, the kind that repeats itself.” A nervous chuckle followed from his lips. It’d only take a few seconds for it to hit Keith and then he’d get it.

Keith, however, turned away from the stars outside the ship to stare up at him, confused. “Soulmate? Dreams?” Keith opened his mouth in quiet questioning. “What are you talking about, Shiro?” His eyebrows drew together in earnest curiosity. Shiro found himself struggling to look away.

“You don’t know?” He asked, struggling to understand how Keith had no idea. He guessed it might have something to do with his upbringing, or maybe his isolation and expulsion. If no one told you, it wouldn’t be hard to miss learning about them. “They’re dreams you have of… the person you’re meant to be with.” Shiro spoke slowly, growing more embarrassed by each word. Having to spell it out was not something he had ever intended, especially not someone who might be his… soulmate.

Keith appeared to be confused for a second, then curious, then rather unimpressed with the idea. “Why?” He asked bluntly before pouting and rephrasing himself. “Why would you need dreams like that? Are you saying these nightmares are these soulmate dreams?” Keith was clearly not happy with the idea and the guilt that hit Shiro in that moment made him want to crawl away and hide.

Shiro sighed, gathering together whatever courage hadn’t fled him yet. “They might be, could be. I think mine are, but it’s hard to say exactly.” He cleared his throat and looked away from Keith’s searching gaze. “I don’t know why else I’ve dreamed of a place in the desert made of wood, of dusty winds, of mountains, of paper and drawings, and the Blue Lion.” It was all out there. He said it. It wasn’t as clear as he could have been, but it was the best Shiro could do. Surely Keith would understand what he was implying.

  
* * *

  
Keith couldn’t help the way his face contorted at the new information. The idea of soulmate dreams was so peculiar and foreign to him that he had to wonder if Shiro was simply playing games with him. Despite how much Keith stared, Shiro’s expression didn’t change. He was genuine, as always, that shining example of man that Keith had always known him to be.

If they were real then that would mean his dreams of fighting and longing were of his soulmate’s, that he had a soulmate. Keith might have staggered with the information if he wasn’t so confused by it. “I dreamed of a lot of scary stuff. Fights, swords, and… pain. It was horrible.” He sighed in frustration that he’d landed this kind of dream. None of it made much sense and the only person he knew that would even come close was… Shiro.

Keith watched with nervous interest as Shiro pressed his lips together and nodded with his eyes cast downward. Whatever he was thinking, he wasn’t saying it. Instead Shiro apologised, catching Keith off guard, “I’m sorry. Dreams are a little tempermental, I guess.” He exhaled heavily and leaned forward. “Did it give you anything to work with? Any clues?”

All Keith could do was blink. There weren’t exactly many clues to gather from dreams he wanted to get the hell away from. He fought with a sword now like in his dream and he’d fought many people, as had all of the paladins. He could let himself hope, in part, that dream was pointing at Shiro, but that would mean knowing what he’d been through, how horrible it had been. Besides, Shiro seemed to be dreaming of the Blue Lion and he wasn’t the pilot of the Blue Lion, so that hardly meant him.

“Not really?” Keith didn’t know what he had to go on, beyond hoping that flutter in his heart when he looked up was a sign. “I don’t know how these dreams work. I’m guessing you dream about someone, but do they dream about you?” Keith couldn’t keep his lips together, breath too heavy as his heart began to race. He’d always found Shiro attractive, but toying with his possibility in his mind made his mouth dry.

Shiro hummed with a smile, soft and barely there but so bright in his eyes. “They do, yeah.” A small laugh left his lips like a sigh. Keith might not have heard it if he wasn’t paying so close attention. “Generally you dream about another person… through their eyes… see the world as they have seen it.”

Keith clicked his tongue and thought over every moment he had dreamed. It had been too dark to make out faces and too loud to make out cries, but perhaps, if he focussed, it might be Shiro after all. “I see… So, you kind of get an idea of who they are then, if you meet them.” Keith was entirely sure he was blushing now, maybe, or it was simply the realisation sending a wave of heat through his body. He felt stupid for not recognising it earlier. “Do you know who yours is?”

Shiro considered his question with a look off at the stars, playing at his lip with his teeth. Even at this angle, his jawline was perfect, beautiful, not giving away what was going on in his mind. He glanced down at Keith with a warm smile, blinking slowly, and answered, “I think it’s you.”

  
* * *

  
Shiro could only maintain the semblance of some dignity before he chuckled nervously and started rubbing at his neck. Saying it aloud after so long felt like a relief, but there Keith was staring up at him with nothing to say. Nor did he say anything for a while. They stood there, awkwardly, Keith making the sounds of half-formed words. It did nothing helpful for Shiro’s nerves.

“Everything seems to point to you, so… I think it’s you,” Shiro quickly added and crossed his arms defensively. He felt so tall and awkward looking down at Keith who seemed to be only able to blink and make sounds. Shiro had hoped that he would have taken the admission a little better.

Keith drew his eyebrows into a line. “Me? You think the dream’s about me? You think the dreams you’ve had are about me?” He scratched at his arm and stared around wide-eyed, mouthing even more than before. Shiro had hardly seen this side of him. This was something new. “So, you’re saying… you think I’m your…”

Shiro couldn’t watch him struggle anymore and cut in. “Soulmate.” He gulped immediately, tasting the strange word on his tongue. He finally said it, although in part. If he wasn’t burning pink in the face, he’d be surprised. “That’s what they say.” He could only manage a nervous chuckle after that, shrugging his shoulders like the waiting was weighing down on them. He didn’t exactly know what he was waiting for.

“How do we… how do we know?” Keith asked. His voice warbled with a hint of curious and maybe, just maybe, a hint of hopefulness. “My dreams might be your experiences…” His hands kept moving as he was talking. Shiro couldn’t help but find him cute like that, nervous and flustered and struggling to comprehend. “Your dreams might be mine too, but we don’t know that for certain. There’s no proof of it. How does that even work?”

Shiro couldn’t say he was an expert on soulmate dreams. He’d had the pleasure of learning of them through whispers of the Garrison. None of which could be called reliable at the least, but Shiro liked to think he had some idea how they worked. “They say if you dream together, that is, sleep together, then you’ll know.”

For a second, Shiro smiled and felt like he’d found a good solution, but the look of surprised horror took to Keith’s face a second later. “Sl-sleep… to-together?!” he asked with a stutter, stepping back and moving his hands as if he didn’t know what to do with them anymore. Keith turned a shade that Shiro had never seen him wear and immediately realised his misstep.

“Same bed, same bed. You know, actual sleeping,” Shiro blurted, just as flustered. He hadn’t exactly been thinking of what he was saying, but he’d felt it had been obvious enough. It was an entirely different question if they could sleep in the same bed. It wasn’t exactly a strange idea, but waking to find out for certain could only go one of two ways.

Keith seemed to regain some of his composure, much to Shiro’s relief. He brushed a hand through his hair and sighed. “And we’ll know in the morning… if we are?” His eyes shone when Shiro nodded in response. Shiro hoped he would see the same glow when he woke up the next morning.

  
* * *

  
That night Keith made his way to Shiro’s room, stiff and rigid like tightening every muscle in his body would stop him from falling apart. He shuffled into Shiro’s bed, pressed his head into a spare pillow, and immediately rolled to his side to sleep. As much as he wanted to cuddle, now wasn’t the time to do that. They had to know for sure.

The dreams came again in blinding colour. Flashing of purple, angry strangers, and fierce battles punctuated his dreams, but Keith fought through them. There had to be more, there would be if he waited. He’d know for sure if he just trusted what Shiro had told him. He would make it through the dream this night.

The dream grew dark, black shrouded around him, the world whizzing past him at speed. Then he was tied down, held, barely aware of the world around him and too tired to open his eyes. This part of the dream was new, unfamiliar, and still there was nothing to be seen.

In the background he heard a quick movement of steps, then a clamour, and someone grunting. There were loud thumps against the floor and before he knew it a hand on his chin. His eyes opened, blurry and blinded by the white light of the room. It was brighter than anything else Keith had seen in the dreams and with it came a warm sense of calm.

When his eyes opened fully, taking in the image before him, he could only capture a glimpse of red, or perhaps maroon. Behind it were concerned eyes and a framing of black hair. It all seemed familiar, so familiar, and then all he could see was the horizon. The white light had melted into the sunrise in the distance with colours of orange and yellow and red. Warmth grew in him as the sun rose in the sky.

As he stirred in his sleep, Keith could hear words he knew so well. They were soft, warm, with just a hint of a smile. “Good to be back.” They faded in his mind and he woke to find Shiro’s face in front of him, eyes closed and breathing deeply. If there were anymore of a clearer sign, Keith would have trouble finding it.

When Shiro finally woke, his eyes narrowed in a smile. He reached out to take Keith’s chin, holding it gently with a glint of something new in his eye. “Did you dream of me?” he asked with a croaky voice, not yet warm enough to form words. Yet he managed to make it clear with every tone he could make that he had indeed dreamed of Keith.

Keith bit his lips and pressed his face into Shiro’s hand, leaning just so to left a kiss against his palm. It felt cold against his cheek that seemed so intent on being warm, the blush extending down his neck. “I think I always have.” Despite how sleepy he felt, despite how much he wanted to look away, he couldn’t. Shiro’s eyes held his just as his hand held his face and in that moment he knew. They both knew, and Keith wasn’t sure if he ever needed to sleep again.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think! All comments and kudos are very much appreciated
> 
> You can find me on [Tumblr (@foxberryblue)](https://foxberryblue.tumblr.com/) and Twitter ([@foxberryblue](http://twitter.com/foxberryblue) or [@particlebarrier](http://twitter.com/particlebarrier)) or on my writing only blog [Foxberry Writes](http://foxberrywrites.tumblr.com/).


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